The Only Thing Constant
by Min Daae
Summary: Groundhog Day was never Neal's favorite movie. Every time the situation with the treasure is resolved, Neal blinks and it's the day Adler dies all over again. Character deaths happen. But there is a happy ending.


_Author's Note: So this is a weird one. I'm still poking around in this fandom and yet curiously enough, this is the thing I've written that I'm happiest with. What's that about? I don't know. _

* * *

There was something wrong.

By this time, Neal had gathered that much, that something was seriously wrong, because while he was no expert on the way time worked, it wasn't like this.

He paused, trying to catch his breath, bent double protectively over the stitch in his lungs just as a cloud of cars burst around the corner and the men chasing him came around the other. "Freeze!" someone yelled. "US Marshals! Caffrey, you're under _arrest._"

"Shit," Neal breathed, but he forced himself to straighten, hands up, and let them slam him down on a car hood and cuff his hands.

Neal just waited.

Sure enough, as they were shoving him into the back of the car, Neal blinked and he was facing Vincent Adler in front of a warehouse, a gun aimed squarely at his face.

* * *

The first time it happened was standing in a big, empty field, men in uniform milling around and Peter white-lipped, white-knuckled beside him. There was a body out in the grass. Neal'd seen it already and thrown up. Peter hadn't, but he looked like he wanted to.

Neal's brain kept going in circles. _Elizabeth. This wasn't supposed to hurt Elizabeth. She shouldn't have gotten involved. Oh god, Elizabeth. I should have… _He wasn't sure what he could have done. Everything was long gone by the time Keller had made his demands. Moz moved fast.

"You happy?" Peter said, suddenly, and Neal flinched. Peter's voice sounded like it'd been dragged over gravel.

"What?"

"We don't have anything on you," Peter said, distantly. "Nothing that would stand up in court. You got away with it."

"Peter, I didn't," Neal tried to say, and Peter turned on him and for a breath, for a moment, Neal thought his (partner) handler was going to hit him. He didn't. That was actually worse.

"Get in the car," Peter said dully. "I don't…I can't look at you right now."

Elizabeth was dead. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of Neal's stomach. He couldn't do (haven't you done enough?) anything. Keller had slipped away again. Elizabeth…

_She'd always been so nice. _

He turned to trudge back to the car, feeling like he wanted to throw up all over again, and took two steps before he blinked and the field was gone and the car was gone and the body was gone, and Adler was pointing a gun at him and trembling with rage.

"What?" Neal said blankly.

Adler shot him. High in the chest, and Neal felt it hit but didn't entirely feel himself hit ground, and then he was rapidly occupied by the fact that he _couldn't fucking breathe _and was drowning in his own blood. Was this what they called life flashing before your eyes? Neal wondered, because he'd been hoping for some good memories at least, not bizzaro-future, and then Peter was hovering blurrily overhead.

"Neal, Jesus, Neal," he was saying, and god, he looked so worried. Neal remembered when Peter looked at him like that. It'd been a while ago. Except apparently it hadn't, because here they were. "Hang on."

He tried to say something, because last words were important, but it just came out as a kind of burbling through the blood. So that was a bust. Was this what dying felt like? It hurt. A lot.

At least Elizabeth wasn't really dead. That was a good thing. Neal let his eyes drift closed and tried to fade out, because if he couldn't say anything clever then this might as well be quick. Peter was shouting something, but he didn't try to hear it.

And then he blinked and Adler was shouting again. Neal stared at him in frank disbelief.

Peter shot Adler in the back. The warehouse exploded.

Neal scrambled to his feet and stared at the burning warehouse in disbelief. "What the hell?" He said, but Peter was already reaching down to pick up something that must have been a scrap of his painting, and he had _definitely _done this scene before.

~.~

He played along right up until he got back to the apartment and found the notecard and key. He stared at it for a few moments. "I've seen this movie," he said to the empty room. "I'm sure I have." Neal picked up his phone and dialed three digits into Peter's number before he remembered Mozzie.

Mozzie was still here. Mozzie would be unbelievably (was already unbelievably) pissed at him. Because as far as Mozzie knew – but he wouldn't be connected to the treasure, probably, if Neal turned it in now. He hesitated a moment longer, and thought of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth dead.

He dialed the rest of the number.

"Peter," Neal said in a tight voice. "I've got a notecard with an address here I think you should check out." Even as he said it, he felt a rush of relief. He could explain to Mozzie – it was tainted, Nazi loot, didn't feel right. Mozzie wouldn't like it, but Elizabeth would be alive. His relationship with Peter would be salvageable. And Moz would forgive him eventually. Probably.

"Neal?" Peter said, sounding annoyed.

"Just go," Neal said, and rattled off the address without looking at the card. "I swear. I didn't have anything to do with this."

"I'm coming to pick you up," Peter said, and Neal hurried down the stairs to wait outside. Stamping his feet to stay warm and blowing on his hands, Neal blinked once.

He was facing Adler. Adler had a gun. "You're kidding me," Neal said, just as Peter's shot rang out.

~.~

This time, Neal tried to get them both away from the warehouse before it blew up. It didn't work. If anything, Peter was more suspicious, more angry, more vehement that Neal had somehow arranged everything.

When Neal went to the warehouse, not sure what else he was supposed to do, the FBI burst in on him three minutes later, and Peter didn't look at him once as Diana locked his hands together, her expression one of utter betrayal. "What am I supposed to do differently?" he asked her, and she shook her head in disgust.

This time he got all the way to a cell, sat in it and paced back and forth across until Peter came. "How could you do this, Caffrey," he said, voice hard and cold. "Screw up like this. I thought better of you. Who pulled the heist? Mozzie? We don't have him yet, but we will. And this time I'll make sure you go away for a lot longer than four years."

Neal couldn't figure out what to say before Peter was gone.

Blink. Adler.

He felt terrible enough that he said, "Fuck you," to Adler's request. This time he bled out from a gut shot. It took a lot longer and it hurt a lot more. He thought Peter might have cried. That didn't actually make him feel any better.

~.~

Just for the hell of it, the next time around Neal worked the situation so Jones didn't get caught and he and Mozzie got on the plane out of the country. He knew everything that was going to happen, after all. They were halfway across the bay when Neal blinked and found himself back in front of the warehouse.

He tried turning in the treasure with an anonymous tip. Blink. Adler.

He tried not going to see the treasure at all, throwing away the notecard. Mozzie got him into it anyway, and that one ended with a particularly unpleasant encounter with Keller that left Mozzie dead and Neal arrested again.

He tried agreeing to Adler's deal, but that one ended in Adler shooting Peter and Neal having to watch him gasp out his last few breaths on the docks, and Neal never wanted to see that again, _ever. _

"Look," he told Peter, once, just after the warehouse had blown up, before Peter started in on him. "Mozzie already stole the treasure. He put it in a warehouse. I don't want anything to do with it."

"Okay," said Peter, seeming surprised. Neal blinked. (Nothing happened.)

"Okay?"

"Thank you for telling me," Peter said.

That one went on for a while. Mozzie slipped away (furious, but alive), Peter and Neal continued working together in relative comfort, the treasure vanished into the depths of the FBI.

Keller kidnapped Elizabeth.

"What do you want?" Neal snarled down the phone line, and Keller said, "The FBI has some of that treasure, don't they? Maybe you'd like to see if you can get some for me, or Ms. Burke won't be too happy."

Neal stole the treasure out of the FBI (the FBI doesn't negotiate) and handed it over to Keller. Keller shot Elizabeth in the head in front of him and Peter found Neal like that, staring at Elizabeth's dead body for the second time. This time Peter hit him.

"It doesn't matter," Neal said from the ground. "It'll just start over again in a minute."

It didn't. He had to go through the funeral, in cuffs, and watching Peter's drawn face the whole time, before he blinked and was back with Adler, and the warehouse, and starting all over again.

~.~

"What if I told you I didn't want to run with the treasure?" Neal said to Mozzie. "I like it here. I like things the way they are."

Mozzie snorted. "I'd ask what the Suit had been brainwashing you with. Neal, you want your leash?"

"I like everyone alive," Neal said bleakly. "I just don't think this'll end well."

"Since when are you a pessimist?" Mozzie asked, seeming almost puzzled. Neal sat down heavily.

"Since I've been doing this over and over again trying to find a way out?"

There was a long pause. "Neal," Mozzie said with utmost seriousness. "Did the Suits give you some kind of drug? You sound off."

Neal couldn't help it. He laughed until his ribs hurt.

(That particular iteration ended in dying again. The parachute didn't work. It was unpleasant. Neal didn't really want to do that again.)

~.~

Neal traded himself for Elizabeth and died. Neal dumped the treasure on the FBI's front door and was halfway back to the apartment before it started over again. "What do you want me to do?" He yelled at Adler at one point. (Adler, ever obliging, shot him.)

He also learned that walking into an explosion hurt more than being shot. This after a particularly bad one where Peter and Elizabeth both died and Mozzie was on the run.

Neal thought he might be losing his mind. Just a little.

As evidenced by the fact that once, after Peter accused him of taking the treasure, he said, "Yes, all right, arrest me," and stuck out his wrists. Peter stared at him, definitely thrown.

"What?"

"I haven't actually tried that before," Neal said, "And at this point I'm kind of running out of ideas."

"What?" Peter said, looking, if possible, even more confused.

"Let me tell you how this will go," Neal said calmly. "You'll arrest me. I'll get halfway to a holding cell, or maybe even all the way there, and then _bam, _I start over again. Back here with a gun in my face."

"Neal," Peter said, and he sounded worried. "Are you okay?"

"No," said Neal, and cracked a grin, "But can we get moving on this, please?"

That one was actually one of the better ones. But that ended too. Rather messily. He didn't want to think about it too much. (Didn't want to think about any of this, really.)

~.~

How did it start? Neal asked himself sometimes. Why did it start? Why then? Elizabeth was dead, and he was going back to the car. Nothing more than that. And yet… "If I'm supposed to be learning something," Neal muttered, "I don't know what it is."

He was tired, and heartsick, and wanted to move past this and on to something else. Tired of this damned treasure and how it had been haunting him since the very first time around. And now it was never going to stop, never going to-

He tried dumping the treasure in the harbor that time around. Someone caught him at it and shot him accidentally. He survived the gunshot wound. He stuck around through the trip to prison. It lasted a little too long after that.

Neal wondered morbidly how long it would take for killing himself to become an honestly preferable option to going through this again.

~.~

"Peter," Neal said, after god-knew how many repeats and resets and redos. "Do you ever just feel – stuck?"

"Stuck how?" Peter asked. Neal waved a hand.

"I don't know. Like no matter what you do everything is always going to turn out the same way?"

"Like fate, you mean?" Peter said, and Neal shook his head.

"No, not really. More like…wagon tracks. Like someone's worn a rut in the road and you can't climb out of it."

Peter looked at him blankly. "No," he said. "I don't think I've ever felt like that."

"Lucky you," Neal said, because he'd gathered by now that he was definitely the only one repeating things. "Cause I'm feeling it a lot lately."

He overheard Peter later asking Elizabeth if she thought Neal was depressed. He found the idea mildly amusing. Except then they both asked him if he was okay, to which he responded with the truth - "I've been repeating the last two months several times now, no, I don't know why, and I'm not sure how to make it stop," refused to see a psychiatrist, and ended up with one anyway.

"Mr. Caffrey," she said, expression almost painfully sympathetic. "Can you tell me why you're here?"

Neal rubbed his forehead. "Peter thinks I'm crazy," he said, then added, "Which I guess I am, a little bit, but I don't think you can really blame me for that."

She smiled patiently through his explanation and asked to see him the next week.

Neal walked in front of a truck.

Back to the beginning.

~.~

He went through the whole thing again listlessly. He played along with Moz's plans, hunted for the manifest, stole it, lied about it. They sold the Degas, recovered the Degas. Right on track. Right in the wheel's rut.

When he told Moz he was going to stay, Mozzie actually hesitated.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No," said Neal. "Nothing."

He braced himself for the phone call. Keller had Elizabeth. The treasure was the ransom. He knew how this one went.

Mozzie didn't leave. "You've been acting kind of weird lately," he said.

"Yeah," said Neal. "I guess." Any minute now.

Mozzie's frown deepened. "Not like yourself kind of weird." Neal almost sighed with relief to hear the phone ring.

"I have to take this," he said, and picked it up. Mozzie didn't leave, and when he hung up, asked, "What was that?"

Neal let his shoulders fall, suddenly very tired and just sick, sick, sick. "Keller's got Elizabeth," he said. "He wants the treasure for a ransom."

It was only at the look on Mozzie's face that Neal remembered that this hadn't happened before. Mozzie hadn't been here before.

Neal wasn't sure why, but the thought gave him hope.

~.~

Mozzie liked Elizabeth. Mozzie didn't want Keller to hurt Elizabeth. Mozzie liked Elizabeth enough to use some of his big score to set a trap.

Neal spent the entire time waiting for it to fail.

It didn't. They got Keller. They got Elizabeth. Neal stood on the sidelines watching Peter and Elizabeth embrace and blinked.

Nothing. Elizabeth's face was buried in Peter's shoulder. No gun, no warehouse, no Adler. He blinked again.

Still the same thing as before.

"Oh God," said Neal, under his breath. "It's over." And melted. That was how it felt, anyway, like his knees just gave up on holding him straight and let him slip to the ground. He folded hard.

"Neal?" Moz said, and then Elizabeth and Peter were turning to stare at him, and Neal found a smile for them and forced it out.

"I think I'm going to rest now," he said, and then everything went away.

~.~

When he opened his eyes he expected to be facing Adler again. Instead he found himself staring at a nondescript ceiling. There were sounds coming from nearby. Household sounds. He lifted his head slowly and found Peter cleaning the kitchen of the Burke household with a vengeance.

He watched Peter for a few seconds, put his head down slowly. Blinked. Just once, cautiously.

And then smiled.


End file.
